


When Spring Returned

by Tehri



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abusive Parent, Affection, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Distance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Ferumbras has a lot of issues, Mother-Son Relationship, Platonic Love, Platonic Relationships, Self Confidence, Self-Worth Issues, fic without dialogue, numb, starved for affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 01:26:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16253807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tehri/pseuds/Tehri
Summary: Ferumbras has spent so much of his life feeling alone and unloved that he has almost forgotten what affection feels like.





	When Spring Returned

It wasn’t love. Not really. Ferumbras had never been in love before, but he imagined it would feel quite different; not so desperate, but a warm and comfortable feeling. No, he rather imagined that what he felt was something else, something more akin to a starving person being given the first sliver of meat after months of fasting and ravenously sinking their teeth into it, tearing it apart and gulping it down without thinking.

He’d received affection from others before. He could remember what that felt like – also that a warm feeling, like wrapping one’s hands around a warm cup of tea. Gentle touches on his shoulders or his cheeks or his arms, warm hands holding his, strong arms pulling him into a tight embrace. It happened regularly, though it felt as though years passed between every occurrence.

That was what home was supposed to be like, Ferumbras thought. Warm. Welcoming. Affectionate. And still, whenever he wandered through the passages and the rooms of the place where he grew up, the place where he would live out his life and die, he couldn’t find it. It was cold and distant, like stars on a winter night, like moonshine on the snow. It had been better before his father died; warmer, and kinder. His father had cared for him. Some would say his father had loved him, but he didn’t dare repeat those words; as much as he wanted to believe them, he couldn’t quite make the connection.

 

No, the issue was not his father. The clouds that had darkened the skies of his life, the cold that always came creeping where it oughtn’t to be felt, that was all because of this mother. When he was but a child, he’d tried to convince himself that Lalia was trying to look after him. That she cared and therefore needed to keep him safe. It didn’t take him very long to realise that this was not the case at all. He’d watch other children with their mothers, and he would never see the same behaviour in them. No cold glares, no cold voices, no simpering smiles, no charades. No façade to keep up.

When his father still lived, it had been easier to accept, easier to deal with. It was not good, of course; how could it be? But with Fortinbras’ steady hands on his shoulders, he could at the very least feel a little bit of that warmth that he sought. He’d be protected from the cold. His mother never did dare to treat him like a trophy around her husband.

But then Ferumbras’ father died. It was not sudden, not in any way – they had been expecting it for a long time already, and it was almost a relief to see him close his eyes and stop breathing. To see him stop suffering. But the cold then chased away every sliver of warmth, wound itself in and out of every corner and niche of the home, and made him feel like a stranger. Like he did not belong. And little by little, he became bitter. The bitterness turned to anger, and the anger to hate. And slowly but ever so surely, it all settled into acceptance and an uncomfortable nothingness.

That’s the problem with cold; it tires you out, and it makes you want to lay down and go to sleep. But you mustn’t sleep in the snow and the cold. And yet, he did so. He settled in, and he waited for the cold to abate. Occasionally he would attempt to warm himself, and he would fight back the urge to settle in to sleep, but to no avail.

And then she came.

 

The more time that had passed, Ferumbras had almost forgotten that he had relatives who cared for him, cared but never really understood. His cousins had grown worried when he grew more and more melancholy, and little by little he learned to fake the smiles and the laughter so convincingly that they couldn’t see the emptiness in his eyes. They didn’t have to worry. And still, for all that he tried to keep them at arm’s length, a part of him still reached out with grasping greedy hands to pull them closer when they would visit and would spend time with him. They were the only source of warmth left in his life.

His mother did perhaps not know, or even care. She cared very little for her husband’s relations, despite now being the matriarch of the family. But she used her position to use them, to squeeze every last drop of life out of them as she pleased – and Ferumbras, having sunk a little too far beneath the surface, did not and could not put a stop to it. It became commonplace for the tweenaged lasses of the family to spend a few months – or, in some cases, a year or two – as Lalia’s attendant, waiting on her and seeing to her every need. None of the lasses who came enjoyed their position. They tried to fight back at the start. When the fighting did not work, they tried to appease her by following her instructions to the letter. When they grew uncertain and could not see how to perform their duties without the name-calling and the cruel words being thrown at them, they grew closed off and quiet.

Ferumbras approached each and every one of them, offering them words of comfort and a chance to let out all the pent up anger and frustration, all of the grief and the tears. Some took him up on the offer, and others did not. No matter how well they’d performed their duties, all of them left with a small gift in hand – as reparations for what his mother had caused.

Most of the lasses he did not know very well. They were distant relations at best, and though he tried his best to treat them kindly in contrast to what they suffered at the hands of his mother, he did not feel close to them. But then his mother’s choice fell on someone closer to home.

 

Ferumbras’ cousin Paladin had three daughters and a little son, all of whom Ferumbras knew quite well. He visited the family every now and then at Whitwell farm, and he’d always spent time with Paladin when they were younger. And his mother, perhaps in a moment of spite or carelessness, chose the eldest daughter – Pearl.

She was a sweet lass, he thought, with her mother Eglantine’s milder temperament. But the Tookish blood of Paladin ran strong in her veins, and she could be just as stubborn as her father if she put her mind to it. Ferumbras wanted to believe that she would do well, that she would be alright. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.

When she arrived, she was a little subdued, but confident still that she could do it. Ferumbras met her personally at the doors of the Great Smials and showed her through the passages to the room where she would be staying. Normally, he would have ensured that she could stay with her aunts; Paladin’s elder sisters all lived in the ancestral home of the Tooks, after all, and they would have been glad to look after their niece during her time there. But Lalia had been adamant that Pearl would not be afforded any additional comforts that other attendants did not have. She would be staying in the servant quarters like the others. Pearl thought little of it, and seemed very calm when she stepped into the little room. It was a small step up from home, she said, where she shared a room with her younger sister Pimpernel.

Her confidence did not last. Ferumbras had known it would not, though he’d been loath to say so. The first two weeks, he watched in silence while Pearl struggled with his mother’s demands. He listened when his mother shouted at the lass and called her stupid and incompetent and clumsy, and every name under the sun. And in the quiet manner that he so often used at home, so unlike what Pearl must have been used to from his visits to the farm, he offered her what he’d offered all the others – a chance to vent, a chance to simply talk to someone and let it all out. She did not accept the offer. Not immediately.

The month was not up before Ferumbras heard a knock on the door to his little rooms late one evening. And as he opened it, he found Pearl standing there, eyes wide and tear-filled and a wobbly smile on her face as she asked if she might come in to talk. He said nothing, only stepped aside and gestured for her to come in.

It was well after midnight when she left. They’d sat before the fire, and Pearl had poured her heart out to him. She’d wept so that her body shook, and Ferumbras had simply put an arm around her shoulders and held her close; he’d listened as she forced the words out, and he’d comforted her as best he was able.

 

It became routine. She’d attend to Lalia during the day. When she had the time, or on days that she did not have to work, she would visit her aunts or even take the time to go all the way to Whitwell to see her family. And in the evenings, she would go to see Ferumbras. It was comforting, in a way, to have the lass confide in him. Soon the talk drifted away from his mother, too, and became more about Pearl and her life, and he in turn confided in her about his own life and experiences. Little by little, Ferumbras began to look forward to those visits and the talks, and no small part of him wished that his mother would not eventually choose a new attendant. It was unfair, perhaps; but he’d quite forgotten what it felt like to have someone to truly confide in, someone who would listen and sympathise and simply be there for him.

And still he told her nothing of the cold he felt, nothing of the warmth he’d missed. The warmth that came back in thin slivers during her visits to him. The warmth that he wanted to cling to so desperately, that he wanted to keep when the nights grew too cold. He was sure that she felt the same cold, that she longed for warmth also – but she could find that with her aunts and her family. Ferumbras had no such reprieve anymore.

 

After a day where his mother had turned her ire on him again, Pearl had not wanted to talk about what she felt or thought. Instead, she’d told him that she understood suddenly why he came to Whitwell to visit so often, starved for affection as he must have been. And he had smiled and laughed with practiced ease and made to tell her that it was not so. But she stopped him, and told him very earnestly that he oughtn’t to lie about that. That she wanted to know, wanted to understand. That she was certain that he needed to tell someone.

And Ferumbras, suddenly as earnest as she had been, told her that he couldn’t tell anyone what he didn’t possess the words to explain. It was little else but emotions; though he’d spent ample time sorting through them and knew them well by now, he simply did not have the words to describe them or what they did to him.

She did not ask again. There was no need when he’d already given her the answer.

 

Then came the day when it all came to a head.

It had been like any normal morning at first; soon after second breakfast, his mother would be taken outside so that she might get some fresh air. Pearl had handled it many times before, and she was expected to do so again. Precisely what went wrong, Ferumbras didn’t know, but he’d scarcely gotten to open the door to his study before he heard the lass scream.

He ran. He ran like he hadn’t done for so many years, but Pearl’s aunts and their husbands were there first. As he rounded the corner to the doors to the garden, he found Pearl in the arms of one of her uncles, still screaming and crying and seemingly unable to stop. The door was wide open. And there, below the flight of steps, laid the broken remains of his mother’s wheelchair and the unmoving massive form of his mother.

At first, he didn’t notice any attempts at contact. He only stood there and stared, taking in the scene before him and committing it to memory. It wasn’t until Garnet, Pearl’s eldest aunt, grabbed hold of Ferumbras’ shoulders and shook him that he came back to himself. Very quietly, he told them to take Pearl to their quarters and house her there for a time. He sent one of the uncles to fetch the healer – if only to provide Pearl with a calming draught. He ensured that his mother’s body would be moved and the pieces of the wheelchair collected from where they lay.

And while he spoke, he often raised his hand quickly to his mouth to cover it; not out of horror or grief, as onlookers seemed to assume, but to hide a grin that threatened to appear.

He waited in his study. News were given to him that Pearl was resting under the effects of a calming draught, and the healer told him also that his mother had indeed died from the fall. Whether it had been an accident or not, she was gone. And that evening, when he returned to his quarters, he was for once relieved to be alone. Once ensconced in his rooms, certain that no one was nearby, Ferumbras began to laugh, a high almost hysterical laughter that had threatened to come out all day. Two decades he’d waited, and all it had taken was a short fall that other hobbits could well have survived. Two decades where he’d been glancing at the clock and muttering about the time, and then she was gone.

It wasn’t fair. It simply wasn’t fair. He was eighty-six years old, and the life he’d once wanted was well beyond his reach by now. It wasn’t fair. She was gone, at last, and hopefully the cold would disappear with her, but it wasn’t fair.

He laughed, a laugh so unlike the practiced one he’d used for so many years, and he felt as relieved as he imagined those hobbits must have been who survived the Fell Winter. Relieved – and yet terrified. Winter was over, but with the spring came new challenges.

 

Pearl’s family came. Their intention had at first been to shield the lass from a possible investigation, but Ferumbras spoke to Paladin and Eglantine and told them very seriously that he had no intention of going through with such a thing. His mother was dead, and he believed Pearl when she said that it had been an accident. It didn’t matter. He didn’t blame her, couldn’t blame her, not unless he wished to make himself a hypocrite. How often had he not wished to do the same? No, Pearl would not be put through any ill treatment. She would not be banished, not from the Great Smials or from the Shire. And when he at last was given a moment alone with the lass, he did what he had wanted to do right away after the accident.

He pulled her into a tight embrace. He thanked her, over and over, like a drowning hobbit just pulled from a river. And she held on to him and wept, though whether the tears were for his words or for the reminder of what had happened he could not tell. She looked very nearly afraid when he released her. And, as he had with all the others, he gave her the gift he had chosen for her – a necklace of pearls that had once belonged to his great-grandmother Adamanta. It would suit her well, he thought, and not only for her name. Though hesitant, she did not refuse the gift, but took it and thanked him in that soft manner of hers.

 

In the time that followed, he did not often see her. Indeed, he did not often have the chance to visit Whitwell farm, and her family did not come to the Great Smials either. But Ferumbras could not blame them; it was such a cold place, after all, filled with grim reminders, and they could not be faulted for wishing to avoid it. But he missed her – missed her visits, her smiles and her laughter, rare though they had been, and he missed her gentle hand on his shoulder and his arm around her as she wept.

Starved for affection, she had said that he was. Perhaps she had been right. He had been starved for years and years, and what little he had found had done very little to sustain him. To be presented with a feast, as it had seemed, and then have it taken away so suddenly when he had not yet eaten his fill, that was a cruel fate. And yet it was the right thing to do. There were stories, he knew, of affection being twisted into something colder and crueller, and starved though he was, he did not wish to put another burden on her shoulders.

 

When he did see her again, she was a shadow of herself. Her confidence was gone, and she seemed so very tired and afraid. Ferumbras felt very nearly offended when she told him of the rumours that were being spread about her, about how she had pushed his mother down the steps on purpose. Folk would have been sympathetic if it had been he who had attended his mother that morning, and no rumours would have been spread at all.

He could not shield her, not entirely. But he could give her the tools she needed to move away from what was said. And Pearl, seeming glad to know that he did not blame her and was not angry, began to little by little confide in him again as she had during her time as his mother’s attendant.

They wrote often to each other, and whether he visited the farm or she and her family visited the Great Smials, they spent time together. Even that was something that folk muttered about to each other, and Ferumbras was hard pressed to not laugh when he was told what the rumour-mill was abuzz with this time. It would not have been a happy laugh – but he would have laughed at the cruelty of some folk, for telling tales of how his heart had been given to a lass almost six decades younger than he. He was too old for that, he would say, and his heart would remain his own for what short life he still had ahead of him. He would be free and unbound.

 

No, it was not love. He’d never felt it before, but he imagined it would not feel that way. Gratitude, perhaps, for putting an end to the winter whether it had been by accident or not.

For ushering in spring and returning the sun to his life, and for chasing away the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify: no, Ferumbras does not fall in love with Pearl. Nor does she fall in love with him. But for a long time, Ferumbras is dependant on Pearl for affection and closeness, and feelings of affection can in such situation become quite confusing to deal with.


End file.
